Signal Wave
Signal wave, glassesless edition!
I left my glasses on the couch for about 90 seconds, and my pit bull puppy broke the frames (eating part of them), and had the lenses out (I got those out of her mouth one at a time...after I got the first one out, I turned around and she had the second one in her mouth. Actually, it was helpful; at least I found it!)
Until I get the new pair, close work is problematic, so if I make mistakes here, please excuse the mess. 
What I've been reading this week:
Oh dear.
This book is subtitled "An Untold Story of Pride and Prejudice." I realize some of you may want to read the book, so I'll try to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say, nobody should rewrite Jane Austen unless they not only possess a great deal of writing skill, but also have the artistic analog to the hands of a surgeon.
Revisiting a text, particularly a well-known, well-beloved text, requires deftness and delicacy. You have to add something, else what you're doing is a simple recapitulation. But great care must be taken when you make changes to such a text. First, I think, you've got to know whether you intend to fill in gaps in the story, provide an alternative take on the story, or go into the story like a wrecking ball and smash it to rubble. The first is easiest, though it's not exactly easy. It's a little like playing Operation: just stick to the text's open spaces and don't mess with anything else. A good example of this would be the Star Wars movie Rogue One. While not executed perfectly, this film knows what it wants to do: tell the story behind the agent who stole the Death Star plans, setting up the drama of the first Star Wars movie. As long as the movie doesn't violate the previously existing world, characters, and plot of A New Hope (and tells an engaging story) it should be OK. (And it basically was).
The second way is to actually revise the original story from a new perspective. This is very difficult, and the difficulty increases the greater the perceived value of the original story. You have to convince your audience that there's a good reason for the alternative take without destroying the fundamental plot, characters, and assumptions of the original. James Joyce's Ulysses is a famous example of this, as is Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. You can see from the high-octane names in this category how hard it is to do this right. Even the well-meaning attempts, like Paramount's alternate time-line version of Star Trek, are likely to crash and burn (as it more or less has).
The third way is to enter the old story swinging, intent on smashing it to pieces. There's often anger, or even malice, in this wrecking-ball method of writing. It's not always wrong to do it; sometimes there's a very good reason for going in swinging. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jane Rhys' revision of Jane Eyre, addresses the story of Bertha Mason, with its underpinnings of colonialism, racism, and sexism. Her concerns are both serious and righteous, which justifies her revision. Moral rectitude isn't enough for successful revision, of course; you also have to be extremely skilled. When this sort of effort goes wrong, you get something like Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi, which smashes the entire Star Wars canon to pieces apparently out of spite.
In all these cases, the artist needs justification for his work in order to persuade his audience to come along with him for the ride. The problem with this sort of writing is that the people who are interested in a revision of a text are probably the same people who liked the original. It is, if anything, a bit harder to get a non-Jane Austen fan to pick up a book called Mary B: An Untold Story of Pride and Prejudice. If you find Jane Austen, 18th-century novels, or high literature of any kind tiresome, you're probably not going to pick that book up. Yet if you do like Pride and Prejudice, you're likely to cast a cold eye on people messing about with it.
I gave Mary B. a chance because, like the author, I always felt a bit sorry for Mary Bennet, the plain, bookish middle child, and wished there were something that could be done for her. However, I knew from the beginning that Katherine J. Chen would fail if she simply rewrote the characters from Pride and Prejudice to suit herself so that she could tell a better story for Mary Bennet. If you're going to take my old chocolate cake recipe and improve on it, you can't turn it into a lemon cake adorned with chocolate drops. All that means is that you like lemon cakes better than chocolate ones.
Austen does not make it easy, because she makes it clear in her original text that Mary is not an actual intellectual. She's pretending to be smart and bookish because she has no beauty. Her intellectual gift amounts to stating the obvious, repeating cliched axioms, and quoting texts in a way that adds nothing to the conversation. The actually intelligent mind among the Bennet girls is Lizzy's. To write a story sympathetic to Mary, one must take her original character into consideration, not pretend that she always was the intellectual, which will not only move the goalposts, but also will incline the author to tear down the character of Lizzy and her happy ending--which is exactly what Katherine Chen does.
To write a story sympathetic to Mary Bennet, an author would need to grapple with the fundamental issue of Top Girls, a play by Caryl Churchill that critiques the right-wing feminism of Thatcherite Britain. What is to be done with a girl who has no valuable assets--neither beauty, nor intelligence, nor exceptional character? What is to be done with her? The answer, under capitalism, is that that girl will be relegated to the social garbage heap. Chen would have to grapple with this issue and make Mary interesting--without straying too far from the original Austen character--in order to succeed. She doesn't. Thumbs down.
I'm about to go see Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. I don't know a lot about it, but apparently it's an animated film, and its premise is that there are many people who adopt the mantle of Spiderman. It's a non-individualistic superhero movie, and as such, I'm actually a little excited to see it:
It apparently relies on the multiverse/parallel universes idea, which I actually have liked since I first saw "Mirror, Mirror" as a child. I hope the parallel universe idea does not re-establish the old sort of heroic individualism into the film, a la Green Lantern, because I think that would be a bit less exciting than actually making a comic-book superhero movie where superheroism is a function rather than an effect of one glorious individual personality. I'll let y'all know what I think of it in the comments tomorrow!
I've been having a hard time finding new music I like. I guess that's the curse of late middle age, though I think gjohnsit has a point about the crappy nature of the music industry reducing everything to homogenized hamburger paste.
The Ezra Collective, from London, have made it past the first set of my barriers: they don't sport wispy female or whiny male lead vocals; they aren't simply a rehash of the most boring kind of hip-hop ever (just turn on the drum machine and say a bunch of junk into a mike, stuff about which you clearly feel as strongly as I feel about my latest grocery list. Add in some salacious lyrics about some girl to spice it up. Make sure the beats don't get too interesting. Pfui.) They also don't rehash the most boring kind of 80s pop, which seems to be another direction music has lately gone, or maybe it's just that the people purchasing music for my health club have shitty taste.
This is good:
What do you think?
How are you all today? Good morning!
Comments
Morning all
Woke with webs in the heads. Spidey was busy. Weaving a web of time deception. Going to boycott daylight saving time until it makes more sense light wise. One of the good things in AZ is they didn't screw with the clocks. Same time year round. States rights.
Have a good one!
Damn, I hate Daylight Savings.
I didn't like it before George W. Bush screwed around with it; now it totally bamboozles me. I feel off for a couple weeks.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Happy Sunday
I thought you were going to write about LASIK when I first saw your title. I've been a glasses wearing individual since I was 7 or 8 years old. I always keep a spare pair with me. I'm near sighted and can do fine detail work up close with my glasses off. But I can't see well beyond about one foot in front of my face. I recently got an evaluation at my cornea doctor's office where they informed me that I am not a candidate for LASIK vision correction. The did let me know about another procedure called PRK. My cornea thickness is too thin for LASIK. I'm trying to decide if PRK is something I want to do. It costs $4K and my insurance doesn't cover it. When I am 65 my benefits from "Satan Co." will be cut off and I'll no longer get "free" eye glasses each year. I have developed a taste for an expensive model of progressive lenses called "Physio" from Essilor. They have the least distortions as I look around.
I get these in a "high index" version that is about 20% thinner than the "regular" model but cost more. They reduce the "coke bottle bottom" glasses look. Now that I'm retired the clock doesn't matter much. The sun comes up and then later it goes down. The animals like to get breakfast when it gets light outside. For exploring new music I like to listen to KCRW from Los Angeles via the internet. Their morning becomes eclectic program often highlights new releases.
Those lenses sound great.
I have progressive lenses (or, well I had), but I don't know if they're the high quality yours are.
I never had glasses until 2013. I got glasses just for close work (which was what went first). That's normal in my family; we start off with better than 20/20 and keep that till we reach midlife, and then our eyes go to hell, more or less, starting with losing close-up vision. I did pretty well to reach 45 before I got glasses.
I got bifocals last year. It cost $900; thank God I had a warranty that actually worked, as the only thing I had to pay money for when the puppy destroyed them was a new frame for $29.99. That was lucky.
Though I know it would be smart to get a second pair, I sort of winced at the thought of spending $1800 for two pairs of glasses. I thought about maybe getting a backup pair of reading glasses (just close-up) but hadn't done it yet.
These glasses were less than six months old.
It's what my partner calls "the puppy tax."
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I have had good luck with cheapo glasses for spares
JC Penny Optical web site at this link is running a special from now till the end of March for 2 pairs of glasses with no line bi-focal lenses for $99.99. There is a store locator on that web site. You supply them with a copy of your prescription and choose from the limited cheap frame options. Bada bing , bada boom glasses with cheap plastic lenses that actually work pretty well. I've had good luck using them for sunglasses in the past. They usually have sunglasses specials a bit later in the spring. Some of Sears store locations have an optical center with similar deals.
Eye buy online these days
You need a recent script, less than a couple years old. Fill in the numbers, choose the frames, they arrive in a couple weeks. Bought 2 pairs last year, one tinted and one clear at 1/4 the cost of Lenscrafters. The way I lose and break them, had to do something. My optometrist clued me into it. Have had good luck with Zennioptical.com.
PRK sure has come a long way since it first started
My doctor was one of the first ones to do this surgery and back then it required a donor cornea to be put on the eye to reshape the original cornea. I really don't understand how it's healthy to remove 2 layers of the cornea. 3 counting the epithelium layer, but that is the most active part of the cornea. The inner most layer helps keep the cornea from soaking up the aquas humor, the watery stuff in front of the iris.
We were one of the first ones doing the older type of lasik surgery, but back then we used a knife to flatten the cornea in certain quadrants. The history behind people learning to do this type of surgery is interesting. Way back when a guy got in a bar fight in Russia and a beer bottle cut his cornea. After that he didn't need glasses anymore. It took off from there.
Good luck with whatever you decide. Ophthalmology has certainly changed since I exited the field.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
you get PRK paid for by insurance with cornea transplant
The doctors are telling me that my corneas are super clear for someone my age and I may never need cornea replacement unless I live to a very old age. PRK is a little longer for the healing afterwards (5 days) but is actually less invasive than LASIK. They don't need to cut a flap to open up the cornea for PRK. If you are active the flap they cut in your cornea can re-open if you have a sharp movement shock like a serious fall or a car accident. This aspect of post LASIK recovery is not short term.
Good morning all
Another inch of rain yesterday and last night. We're in a pattern I guess.
As to entertainment, We've been catching up on the last season of Endeavour (the young Morse). Somehow we missed the airing of the last season. It is on the PBS passport page. And I recently read "Best Cook in the World" by Rick Bragg... A must for any southern cook. Lots of fun.
Spring is beginning here. When I was teaching we worked with other schools along our general longitude to record when the daffodils bloomed. In that way we calculated the speed of spring's advance. Most years it was 12-15 mile per day.
John Denver's Spring suite...(3 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOonHGpHLms]
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I love Endeavour; I actually like it a bit better than Morse.
I should pick it back up again.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
You can watch Morse on youtube
...at least I did a few years ago.
Here are many episodes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0CwUd33kbI&list=PLPLQk4_H79Y9irgJV_3tey...
...and several Endeavours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfWFCCVsrqI&list=PLASsWP8vCILtGPKuq21Ilm...
The last episode of Morse...when everyone but Lewis turns against him as he faces the masons is quite the interesting piece. I think this is the one....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfDoWricyg
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
That's a wonderful idea about measuring the rate of spring.
We should write music for it and call it "The Rate of Spring" [ducks]
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
My daughter enjoyed the Spider Man movie.
I didn't see it.
As far as revisiting old texts, having done it myself with my Logos series, and TRIED to add new wrinkles and thought, I agree, it ain't easy. To do the characters justice you have to stay as true as possible to the original intent of the characters, and their motivations and actions. It requires not just an act of Empathy for the characters, but also a bit of empathy for the author as well. Which IMHO, is why so many H.P. Lovecraft fans fail so spectacularly. They just can't get into the head of a mad depressive artist with terminal self-loathing and self-sabotage.
As far as Rogue One goes, I admit I was a bit pissed to see the 4th take on that story, and IMHO the least interesting. (Three Previous Versions were: A Comic Book [Bleh], The Star Wars RPG D6 [WHOOT], The Lucasarts Video Game "Dark Forces" [WHOOOOT!]) It felt... bleh. Repurposed old story with some soap opera elements. And while star wars always has been that, I have to Quote the Original Star Wars RPG for what it SHOULD Be.
I may be a bitter ex-fan, and I admit it.
However, rather than wallow in it, with the occasional mouthing off, I simply decided to write my own stuff instead. Writing every day again, and it feels great.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA0_vr_Ktl8]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I didn't read the comic book
I tried to play the RPG on two separate occasions with two different GMs--both times, we played once or twice and then the GM just threw up his hands and the game went SPLAT, once b/c of interpersonal conflict and the other time for no reason I could fathom.
As someone with no other tellings of this story in mind, I'd give the movie somewhere around 2 1/2 stars. It was watchable, the plot, while not particularly good, was not insulting either to Star Wars or me, and the characters did not grate on my nerves.
I kind of don't appreciate the idea that the vulnerability in the Death Star happened because of deliberate sabotage; that doesn't fit well with the nature of the vulnerability itself. It's well established that nobody can make that shot without using the Force, ergo, nobody but a Jedi could make it. The Jedi are, for all anybody knows, extinct (apart from Vader) at the time that the sabotage is done, so it actually makes no sense to sabotage the Death Star in a way that can't be exploited. I can hear the apologists already in my head "But he HAD to make it a tiny imperfection otherwise the Empire would KNOW he had sabotaged it blah blah blah." Nobody said you had to write a story where deliberate sabotage happened at all; it always made plenty of sense that in a machine that large and that complex, there would be little errors, imperfections or failures here and there; the key is finding out what they are and whether any could be exploited. That's what the story should have been about; it would have focused attention back on the espionage and the Rebellion agent.
But it would have been harder to write believable espionage in an interesting story than to create a scientist who deliberately screwed the thing up.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Hell the old RPG had a great piece of short fiction...
About General Dodanna pouring over the plans, convinced that they'd thought of everything, but knowing there had to be SOMETHING they could do. (His first plan was to crash every ship they had into the thing, hoping they did enough damage to at least stop the planet from being destroyed. Really drove home the danger.)
Of course, I parted ways with Star Wars and the RPG after Special Editions. It was completely obvious that Lucasfilm was willing to use the EU as a farm club, steal the best stuff, and ignore the entire point if it made money. I shouldn't have been surprised, honestly, but when it became blatantly obvious that they didn't care one whit about canon or continuity, I stopped caring about trying to keep track.
That's the big danger of long running stories, IMHO. At a certain point you're going to run into a contradiction if you have multiple authors. You can either put in the work to make it fit, or just do what corporate America does and ignore anything old that contradicts.
Of course that results in old fans no longer caring, but since we already spent our money, they don't give a shit.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Good morning CSTMS. I got nuthin' today, but the first song
by that group was a good start to the day. By the lat song I figured I wasn't ready for a steady die of it, however that is often the case with new stuff. The mood for today is sideways, heh. Your essay made me think of some of the re-writes, addenda, prequels and sequels I've seen and read, which got me to thinking about the one's that haven't seen the light of day yet, like maybe "The Old Man and the Dock, a prequel."
Rain, rain and more rain here, and I just read where there is the beginning of a super-bloom in one of my favorite desert haunts. We're going there, as we do every year, but will not arrive until the 25th at the earliest. Hoping it lasts. I could use their sun and temps, too.
Time to get moving, have a great one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
The Old Man and the Dock...LMAO!
Do you know about the Hemingway parody contest?
The Old Man and the Seal
By Mark Silber
Finalist, International Imitation Hemingway Competition, 1986
He was an old man who fished alone when he fished by himself. For 358 days now he had been fishless.
Maybe if I used bait, he thought. And a hook. The last fish he caught was still in his pants pocket,
forgotten.
“Qué stencho,” the old man said. “No wonder I fish alone. But bad smell does not matter to a man, though this smell is very bad.”
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Yeah, I'm familiar with that contest, but would never essay to
try it. Another great Hemingway take-off showed up in a "famous authors answer "why did the chicken cross the road?" the faux Hemingway ...
Why did the chicken cross the road? To die, in the rain.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
ROTFL
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Thank you guys for the heads-up
about how to get cheap(er) glasses.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
"The Meursault Investigation"
by Kamel Daoud, is the story of Camus' "The Stranger" told from the Arab side. As you recall, Meursault was on trial for killing an Arab, although as it goes along he's really on trial for being different...I mean, as well as for being a killer. But nowhere in "The Stranger" is the victim named. His story is never told.
In "The Meursault Investigation" the victim's brother is found and has a lot to say.
Pretty good reading.
What a great idea.
I'll look it up. Thanks for the steer.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
this is an opportunity
democracy in motion
caveat
fourth estate
Aloha friends,
Tulsi will be live TONIGHT at 7pm CT / 8pm ET for a CNN Presidential Town Hall hosted by Dana Bash.
Tune in to CNN or stream live on CNNgo for a spirited discussion on the most crucial issues facing our nation and the world.
They are asking us to add to the debate by listing most important issues as well
https://www.tulsi2020.com/a/tulsi-cnn-town-hall
Always a pleasure
To read your open threads. I learn so much and I love your writing.
Ah, Yes. Jane Austin. One of the second pieces of literature I read at the age of 13 after Catcher in the Rye. Have you ever seen Matthew MacFayden in the movie version of Pride and Prejudice? Yeah, he really curls the toes as Mr. Darcy
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier